Misha Friedman October 24, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Ukraine.Tags: Ukraine
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Coal Miners, Eastern Ukraine 2010
Misha Friedman (b. 1978, Moldova) received his masters from the London School of Economics in 2000. From 2005-2010 he worked for Médecins Sans Frontières documenting the humanitarian crisis in Northern Uganda, urban violence in Nigeria, Kala Azar in India, and civil war in Darfur. His recent projects deal with corruption in Russia, the tuberculosis epidemic in the former Soviet Union and illegal migration into the EU through Ukraine. Misha’s works have been recognized by: POYi, PDN’s 30, Critical Mass Top 50 and the Forward Thinking Museum — Artist of the year. His work has recently been published in: Le Monde Magazine, New York Times, Le Figaro and Human Rights Watch. Misha is represented by Cosmos Photo in Europe and is based in New York.
About the Photograph:
“Inspired by German and French Romanticism, this ongoing project from Ukraine is my attempt to show how Nature and Man have learned to live within the industrial complex. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of Eastern Ukraine ended up ruined. Many mines and massive factories are lying abandoned, people are unemployed or earn just enough to survive and nature is taking over in full force. For decades this land was a symbol of Soviet rationalism and victory over nature, but it did not take long for all of that to crumble, leaving behind ruined lives. I like this image because to a certain extent it goes against how third-world coal miners are normally presented: perpetually unhappy and miserable, forgetting that most of the time they have other emotions. Here, for instance, we enjoyed a good joke and some seriously poisonous moonshine.”
Andres Gonzalez May 4, 2009
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Ohio University, Ukraine.Tags: Ukraine
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Truskavets Sanatorium, Western Ukraine
Andres Gonzalez (b. 1977, United States) is currently based in Istanbul, Turkey. He is originally from California where he pursued a degree in writing from Pomona College in Claremont, California – but after a two year stint in Namibia teaching environmental education and snapping pictures along the way, he realized that photography was a much more natural way for him to express his world view. He is the recipient of the Canon Italia Young Photographer’s Award in 2009, was a Fulbright Scholar in 2008. He was selected as one of PDN’s Emerging 30 photographers in 2006. His work has been published by W Magazine, Monocle, and Wallpaper among others.
About the Photograph:
“This photograph was taken in the resort town of Truskavets in Western Ukraine from a project I started back in 2006 called Sanatorium, which looks at the culture of health and healing in Ukraine. I was initially drawn to how Ukrainians who visit the springs embrace the water’s healing qualities, but after I started making pictures I became fascinated by their history and legacy in Ukrainian culture. The history of sanatoria in the former Soviet Union goes back to the conception of the USSR itself, when mansions were seized by the Bolsheviks and converted to hospitals and clinics for the poor. Later sanatoria played an important role in healing a war-torn nation – after the Second World War the Soviet government encouraged its citizens to look inwards, both figuratively and literally through domestic travel, to explore the far-flung parts of the Union in hopes of cementing its commonality.” (more…)
Guillaume Herbaut March 13, 2009
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Ukraine.Tags: Chernobyl
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Slaviutich, Ukraine, “Chernobyl: 20 Years After”
Guillaume Herbaut (b.1970) is a founding member of l’Oeil Public photo agency in Paris. His work on Chernobyl won the Kodak Critics Prize in 2001 and was published at Le Petit Camarguais in October 2003, also winning the Fuji Book Prize the following year. “After Oswiecim”, a documentary work on Auschwitz today was exhibited at Trans Photographiques festival in 2005. He was also awarded a grant from the French Ministry of Culture and has shown at Visa pour l’Image. His photographs were also exhibited at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris.
About the Photograph:
“This photograph was taken in Slaviutich, about 50 kilometers from Chernobyl. This city was been built after the Chernobyl explosion for workers of the plant who were left without homes. The Soviet government planned to make it an ideal city, however, after it was built, the surrounding forest was radioactive. The children wearing masks are in School n°4 in Slaviutich, during an emergency training in case of a nuclear explosion. I’ve returned to Chernobyl numerous times since 2001 and am haunted by the place.”
Andrea Diefenbach August 29, 2008
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Ukraine.Tags: AIDS, Ukraine
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Andrea Diefenbach (b.1974, Germany) studied photography at the University of Applied Science in Bielefeld. She graduated in 2006. Her project about AIDS in Odessa was published as book by HATJE CATZ in June 2008 (US: August 2008). Most of her work centers on ‘concerned photography’ and social issues in Germany or Eastern Europe and has been published in STERN, GEO, DIE ZEIT, Brigitte, NEON among many others. Her work in Odessa was also awarded at the Lumix festival in Hannover, Germany in June 2008.
About the Photograph:
“I took this picture after Natascha had visited her two children in an orphanage. She was looking forward to seeing them for a long time and than was only allowed to see them for a few minutes. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to get her children back. Natascha is one of the persons I accompanied for my project about the AIDS-epidemic in Odessa, Ukraine, in spring 2006. The Ukraine holds the sad European record for new cases of infection, and is among those nations in which AIDS is currently spreading most quickly. Odessa, the port city through which the HIV virus is presumed to have been introduced to the countries of the Soviet Union, is now one of the most heavily impacted cities. Estimates by the World Health Organization indicate that as many as 160,000 individuals are infected with HIV live in the city of one million.”
